How to Use Hashtags on Facebook for Business

Using hashtags on Facebook can feel like a bit of a throwback, but they've become a powerful tool for getting your business in front of the right audience. When used correctly, they can boost your visibility, categorize your content, and help you join larger conversations relevant to your brand. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about creating and implementing a smart Facebook hashtag strategy for your business.

Why Bother with Hashtags on Facebook?

For a long time, hashtags were the signature feature of Twitter and Instagram, while on Facebook, they felt clunky and out of place. That’s changed. Facebook's algorithm and user behavior have evolved, making hashtags a genuinely useful feature for discoverability. Think of them as a lightweight filing system for the entire platform.

Here’s what they can do for your business page:

• Increase Your Reach: Posts with hashtags are searchable. When a user searches for or clicks on a specific hashtag, your post - even if from a business they don't follow - can appear in their feed. This extends your reach beyond your existing followers.
• Boost Engagement: By targeting relevant interest hashtags, you attract an audience that is already engaged with that topic. This leads to more meaningful interactions like likes, comments, and shares, signaling to Facebook’s algorithm that your content is valuable.
• Build Community Around Your Brand: Creating a unique, branded hashtag gives your fans and customers a way to connect with you and each other. It’s perfect for user-generated content (UGC) campaigns, events, or simply creating a community space.
• Categorize Your Content: Hashtags allow you to group your posts by theme or campaign. For example, a restaurant could use `#TuesdayTacoSpecials` for its weekly promotion, making it easy for followers to find all related posts.

How to Find the Best Hashtags for Your Business Page

The magic isn't in using hashtags, it's in using the right hashtags. Randomly throwing popular tags onto your posts won't work. Your goal is to find tags that are both relevant to your content and actively followed by your target audience. Here’s how you can find them.

1. Research What Your Competitors Are Using

Start by taking a look at your top 3-5 competitors on Facebook. Analyze the posts that get the most engagement. What hashtags are they using? You’ll likely find a mix of a few broad industry terms and some more specific, niche tags. You don’t want to copy them exactly, but this process is a great starting point for identifying relevant hashtags you might have missed.

2. Use Facebook’s Native Search Feature

This is the most direct method. Go to the Facebook search bar and type in a hashtag you think is relevant (e.g., `#digitalmarketingtips`). Facebook will show you a feed of public posts using that tag. Pay attention to two things:

• Volume: How many people are posting with this tag? A very high volume isn’t always great, your content could get buried quickly. A tag with almost no posts is also ineffective. Look for a healthy middle ground.
• Relevance: Are the top posts in this feed actually related to your business and content? If a tag has been co-opted for spam or unrelated topics, steer clear.

3. Create Your Own Branded Hashtags

A branded hashtag is unique to your business. It’s not meant to be found through searches by new audiences, instead, it’s for organizing your content and encouraging user participation. A great branded hashtag is:

• Short and memorable: Something like `#BikeWithBrenda` is better than `#[BrendasBestBikes_Official]`.
• Easy to spell: Avoid complicated words or quirky spellings.
• Clearly related to your brand name: You want people to instantly associate it with you.

A good example in practice is KitKat's long-running `#HaveAbreak` campaign. It is synonymous with the brand and encourages social engagement.

4. Identify Niche and Community Hashtags

This is where you find your people. General tags like `#food` are drowning in content. But more specific tags like `#VeganBakingClub` or `#ShopLocalHouston` connect you with a self-selected group of highly interested users.

Think about location, specific interests, hobbies, or community identities related to your brand. A local bookstore would get far more traction with `#AtlantaReaders` than with `#books`.

Facebook Hashtag Best Practices

Creating a stellar hashtag strategy is part science, part art. There are no definitive rules set in stone, but decades of social media marketing have given us some very strong guidelines. Here are the most effective do's and don'ts.

The Do’s

• Do Keep it Minimal: Less is more on Facebook. Where 15-20 hashtags might work on Instagram, on Facebook it can look cluttered and even spammy. A good rule of thumb is to use between 2 and 5 well-chosen hashtags per post.
• Do Use a Mix of Hashtag Types: A strong strategy includes a mix of broad, niche, community, and branded hashtags. For a local plant shop, a post might include a broad tag like `#Houseplants`, a community tag like `#PlantMoms`, and a branded one like `#GreenThumbNursery`.
• Do Place Them Intelligently: You have two primary options for hashtag placement. You can integrate them naturally into the sentence (e.g., "We're so excited to see everyone at our `#AnnualSummerSale`!"), or you can group them cleanly at the end of your post caption. Both work well, choose the one that fits your brand’s voice.
• Do Check Hashtags Before Using Them: Take 30 seconds to search for a hashtag on Facebook before you add it to your post. This helps you avoid associating your brand with any inappropriate, spammy, or unintended content that might have taken over the tag.

The Don’ts

• Don’t Use All General Tags: Resist the temptation to only use massive, popular hashtags like `#marketing` or `#business` just because they have millions of uses. Your content will be a tiny fish in an enormous ocean and will disappear from the top of the feed almost instantly.
• Don’t Make Them Too Long or Complicated: Tags like `#MyAbsoluteFavoriteCoffeeShopInTheWorld` are impossible to read, remember, or type. Keep it simple. Capitalizing the first letter of each word (CamelCase) can help with readability, like `#ShopLocal` instead of `#shoplocal`.
• Don’t Use Punctuation or Spaces: Hashtags can only contain letters and numbers. Any spaces or special characters (like !, ?, or &) will break the hashtag. A tag written as `#taco tuesday!` will only register as `#taco`.
• Don't Be Tone Deaf: Pay attention to what's going on in the world. Using a trending hashtag about a sensitive news story to promote your product is a fast way to alienate your audience and damage your brand reputation.

How to Track Your Hashtag Performance

Once you’ve started using hashtags, you need to know if they're actually working. While Facebook doesn't offer a dedicated hashtag analytics tool, you can gather useful information with a bit of manual effort.

Check Your Post Insights

The simplest way to start is by looking at your existing Facebook Page Insights. When you test a new set of hashtags, pay close attention to your Reach and Engagement metrics for that post.

• Reach from Non-Followers: A key indicator of hashtag success is seeing a lift in reach to people who don't already follow your Page.
• Engagement Rate: Compare the engagement rate of posts with hashtags against those without. Are you seeing more likes, comments, and shares?

Create a simple spreadsheet to track this. For each post, note the date, the content, the hashtags used, the total reach, and the total engagement. Over time, you’ll start to see patterns showing which hashtags drive the best results.

Manually Check the Hashtag Feeds

Periodically click on the hashtags you've used in your own posts. Where does your content show up in the feed? Being ranked under the "Top" posts for a relevant hashtag is a huge win - it means Facebook's algorithm has determined your post is high-quality and very relevant to that topic search, giving you prime visibility to a wider audience.

Final Thoughts

Treating hashtags on Facebook as a strategic tool rather than an afterthought can meaningfully extend your business's reach and connect you with a more engaged audience. The key is to be intentional: research relevant tags, keep your list concise and focused, and monitor your results to see what truly resonates with your ideal customers and community.

On a practical level, keeping your hashtag strategy consistent across every post is one of those small tasks that can eat up a lot of time. This is where we built our own tool, Postbase, to make a real difference. Our visual content calendar allows you to plan, write, and schedule all of your social media content - including your researched hashtags - for every platform well in advance, all from one dashboard. This simple setup saves you from juggling logins and spreadsheets so you can spend less time scheduling and more time connecting with your community.